I dunno, I think it *sucks* as a romance, and maybe that is just because I'm living in a culture that has 400 years of romance filtered through that play, but I'm not feeling it. As an attack on teen love, that's funny. That works for me.

You're also right that it's nearly impossible to overcome the cultural baggage of the play, and that productions are a chore. I don't really know where you're going with Mercutio dying, I've never really looked into his character too strongly, I just know the romance seems trivial to me. Especially for a writer who seems to have such a different outlook in his sonnets, it seems impossible that he would write a play that's so purely trite.

But you know -- maybe it is just my cultural baggage, who knows...